The Autobiography of James T. Kirk

by David A. Goodman

  The dining area was filled with bearded, raggedy men in frayed, soiled clothes, many with a glassy-eyed hopelessness. They stood in line for a bowl of soup, a cup of coffee, and a hunk of bread. Spock and I did the same, and we sat down among them. I was starting to feel as hopeless as those around me. If I couldn’t stop McCoy, would this world ever change? Is this where I would spend the rest of my days?

  And then Edith Keeler got up to speak. She spoke of the years to come, weirdly prescient on the subject of space travel, and about the people of the future who would solve the problems of hunger and disease.

  “Prepare for tomorrow,” she said. “Get ready, don’t give up. You can’t control the hardship, but you can control its effect. The hunger might not abate, but the sadness is yours. The cold bites through your blanket, but you don’t need to let the hopelessness in with it. It is your decision what kind of person you will be, how you will respond to the challenges you face.

  Keep your promises, forgo your grudges, apologize when necessary, speak your love, and speak it again.” It was as if she was talking to me, telling me to trust in myself. I found her calming and captivating. I looked around the room and could see I wasn’t the only one. She was giving these people life. Afterward she came and found me.

  “Mr. Kirk, you are uncommon workmen. That basement looks like it’s been scrubbed and polished.” I felt guilty getting this compliment, but I took it with a smile. She told us of a room in her building, which Spock and I could rent, that sounded affordable given our new wages. She walked us there.

  It took us a long time to reach her apartment building, but not because it was far away. The streets of New York City were cold and unforgiving. As we walked, we came upon people huddled in doorways or on park benches, under tattered blankets and newspapers, trying to keep warm. Edith stopped at each one, told them where the mission was, that they could rest there and stay warm. Many were hostile to her, some intoxicated, but it didn’t deter her; she knew many of them personally, and we helped some return to the mission. Her selflessness was astounding.

  Finally, we made it back to her apartment, and she introduced us to her landlord, a hulking, wheezy man in a stained undershirt named Altman. He scowled at us.

  “I’m not lettin’ no slant eye live here,” he said. I looked at him, confused. “The Chinaman’s gotta go somewhere else.” It took me a moment to understand what he was saying, and then I realized it was directed at Spock. I had never seen such unapologetic racism before. It was frightening in its casualness and acceptability. Edith, however, seemed ready for it.

  “They’re employees of mine,” she said. “I’d consider it a personal favor.”

  “You’re not the only one who lives in this building,” Altman said. “People’ll get upset.”

  “Father Cawley will also appreciate it, I’m sure.” The mention of the clergy swayed him. She then pulled out two slips of paper that took me a moment to remember were money. She was paying him our rent a week in advance.

  “He has to use the back entrance,” he said. “And I catch him talking to any white women or kids, he’s out.”

  “That sounds reasonable,” Edith said. In fact, it sounded ridiculous, but it was clearly the practical course.

  She left us with Altman, who took us to the room. Like everything else we’d seen so far, it was drab and depressing. A sagging bed, sooty curtains, and a wooden table and chair, scratched and stained. The room smelled of ashes; the habit of inhaling the smoke of burning tobacco was an epidemic in this world. I knew this was going to be a difficult time to navigate, but somehow this woman had given me hope.

  The days filled up quickly. There was a lot of work to be done at the mission. Spock and I learned how to make coffee in a device called a “percolator,” wash dishes, and cook food using other ancient appliances. We also went with Edith to scrounge food donations from the open markets all over the city. New York was in the grip of an economic downturn of massive proportions. People all over were in lines for soup or bread; despondent men stood on street corners, with wooden buckets filled with mostly rotten apples that they offered to sell for a penny. Yet Edith bullied her way into the kitchens of the upscale hotels and restaurants, getting discarded bones and bruised vegetables for soup, and three-day-old bread with mold that Spock and I would have to cut off.

  I learned more about her. The daughter of a minister, she was raised in London, England. She came to America in the 1920s and worked in the church. She was doing the same work then she did now; there were always poor people who needed help, she said. Now there was just more of them, and some had once been rich.

  We worked at the mission from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. on that first day, and then we tried to find other work, which was very difficult. I found some day work at the loading docks. I also picked up ideas from the other men in the mission; you could go to one of the upscale parts of the city in the morning, gather up discarded newspapers, and resell them downtown. I was scrounging for pennies, but we needed whatever we could.

  Spock discovered Chinatown in the lower part of the city. He passed for Chinese, and thanks to the universal translator in his pocket, it appeared that he could speak it. As such, he was able to acquire work, first washing dishes in the local restaurants, then repairing broken machinery.

  Once our money started to come in, we began to acquire the bits of primitive electronic equipment Spock needed to build his memory circuit. He had to figure out some way to slow down the recording on his tricorder so we could see how history had been changed. We didn’t know how much time we had; Spock estimated that McCoy might not arrive for a month.

  Despite how hard I was working, I found myself more relaxed than I’d ever been. The work was physically exhausting, but all the responsibility for our mission lay with Spock; I could only wait for his machine to work. I began to feel differently; the emotional connection to the men and women of the future began to fade in my mind. I became this regular workingman on primitive Earth. It was a strange vacation: I was mistreated by employers, usually smelled terrible, and was always hungry.

  And I was drawn to Edith, and she to me.

  We’d take walks in the evening, I would talk honestly about the future, and she would laugh as if I was joking. But she was no primitive; she had an advanced view of people that would have made her quickly at home in the 23rd century. She seemed to know that rich industrialists were holding on to their money, and could end the suffering of the world in a heartbeat, but that they wouldn’t.

  “They’ll only open their purses,” she said, “to make some war.”

  She was disgusted by her era’s priorities. I found her fervor appealing and enchanting. Our physical relationship was both passionate and chaste; she was a religious woman and this was a primitive time. But I spent many evenings in her apartment, where she would cook me something she called shepherd’s pie and we’d talk and laugh and comfort each other. And I’d go back to my room in a bit of a romantic haze to find Spock, working on an ever-growing contraption of wires and radio tubes. One night, about a week and a half after we’d been there, I walked in, and he had something to show me. On the small screen of his tricorder, an image appeared of Edith in a newspaper article six years in the future. I read the opening sentence in proud astonishment.

  “The president and Edith Keeler conferred for some time today—”

  Suddenly, Spock’s invention exploded in a shower of sparks and smoke.

  “How bad?”

  “Bad enough,” Spock said. But I was lost in my delight in what I thought to be Edith’s future.

  “The president and Edith Keeler—”

  “It would seem unlikely, Jim …” Spock said. “A few moments ago, I read a 1930 newspaper article …” I wasn’t listening, or I would’ve heard that he called me “Jim,” usually a bad sign.

  “We know her future. In six years she’ll be very important, nationally famous—”

  “Or, Captain, Edith Keeler will die. This year. I saw her ob
ituary. Some sort of traffic accident.”

  “They can’t both be true,” I said. It was stunning. What was he talking about? But even as I asked the question, I knew what the answer was.

  “Edith Keeler is the focal point in time we’ve been looking for, the point both we and Dr. McCoy have been drawn to.” Spock’s theory about time rivers ended up being true. But it didn’t seem possible that all of history could turn on one person. McCoy does something when he shows up.

  “In his condition, what does he do? Does he kill her?” I felt terrible after I said it; I was actually hoping that McCoy had killed her, so that I could stop it, so that she could live.

  “Or perhaps he prevents her from being killed, we don’t know which.”

  I told him to fix his machine so we would. He then said it would take him weeks.

  “We should stay as close to Miss Keeler as we possibly can,” Spock said. “This will provide us with the best chance of stopping Dr. McCoy before he commits whatever act changes history.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem,” I said.

  “If you find it difficult, I will be willing—”

  “I’ll be all right, Spock.” I then left the room and took a walk.

  Days passed into weeks, and there was no sign of McCoy. I gave up my other jobs and escorted Edith to and from work. I spent every waking moment with her, and sometimes perched myself on the roof across the street from her apartment until she turned out the light and went to bed. Some nights she would let me stay in her apartment, as long as I slept on the floor. I was keeping her safe, but the truth was I felt safe next to her. I think, for the first time in years, free of the responsibilities of command, I let myself fall in love.

  It was only bad luck that we missed McCoy arriving at the mission. He was exhausted and paranoid. Edith greeted him; he begged her not to tell anyone he was there. She took him to an upstairs room in the back, cared for him and kept the secret, even from me. Around this time, Spock completed the repairs to his machine. It told us that Edith started a pacifist movement that delayed the United States’ entry into World War II, allowing Germany to win. It was clear how history was supposed to play out. Edith had to die.

  But I wasn’t going to let her. I didn’t tell Spock, but I wouldn’t let the woman I loved die. I couldn’t. All those people whose lives would be changed weren’t real to me anymore. I would stay in the past, live my life with Edith. I indulged in a delusion we could change the future together. With what I knew, with the knowledge I had, I could make sure Germany didn’t win, and Edith could still live. I think Spock suspected my plan, but he said only that if I did what my heart told me to do, millions would die who didn’t die before.

  One night, I left work with Edith. I had a little money in my pocket now; we didn’t need to spend it on radio tubes anymore. I was going to take her out to dinner; she, however, had a different suggestion.

  “If we hurry, maybe we can catch the Clark Gable movie—”

  “What?”

  “You know, Dr. McCoy said the same thing …” I stopped and grabbed her.

  “McCoy! Leonard McCoy?” McCoy was here …

  “Yes, he’s in the mission …” How long had he been here? Had he already saved her life? Had we missed it? I truly hoped that we had.

  “Stay here. Stay right here,” I said, then turned. “Spock!” I ran across the street. Spock was still working in the mission, and he heard my shouting. He came out, and seconds later, McCoy did too. I couldn’t believe it. I grabbed him in a hug. And stepped back.

  He was in his Starfleet uniform. I hadn’t seen mine in over a month; it was in a bag at the bottom of the closet in our room. Suddenly I was back on the ship, back in my head as captain. I felt guilty at what I’d been doing, about what I’d been thinking. I turned and saw Edith. She was crossing the street. And a truck was barreling toward her.

  “Go, Jim!” McCoy yelled. It almost drowned out Spock’s shout.

  “No, Jim!” I stared at Edith, frozen. The uniform blazed in my mind.

  I felt McCoy try to push past me to grab her, so I grabbed him. I heard Edith’s cry as the truck’s horn honked and the terrible rending of metal and flesh. I held McCoy a long moment, as Edith’s painful scream seemed to echo in my mind.

  “Did you deliberately stop me, Jim?” McCoy was incredulous, angry. I pushed him away. And then we were soon back in the 23rd century, on that dead world.

  After a week back on the Enterprise, I was more sure of my mistake. My mind wasn’t on my job; I could only think of Edith. When I was in the past, the future faded in my mind. But now that I was back in my own time, Edith was right there. I should’ve saved her. I let her die. The millions that were saved still weren’t real to me, even though they were with me every day. I didn’t know how I was going to live with it. In some ways, her memory has faded now, but I find I still regret it emotionally. I was a content man; I discovered what life was without duty and honor—just a job and love. It is horrible and self-centered that I regret it, and I suppose I paid for that selfishness, because I would never experience that contentedness again.

  “I’ve got the receiver you requested, sir,” Uhura said, over the intercom. I was in my quarters, lying down. I hadn’t slept in days, but I couldn’t put this off. I sat up on the bed and activated the small viewscreen.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant, put it through.” On the viewscreen, Uhura’s face was replaced by Mom and Dad. They were looking particularly haggard.

  “Jim, this is a nice surprise,” Dad said, but Mom looked worried.

  “I don’t think it’s a social call, George.” Since she had seen through it so quickly, I knew there was no point holding off.

  “Mom, Dad, Sam’s dead.” Mom immediately burst into tears. Dad put his arm around her. I had to keep going. “Aurelan too.”

  “What … about Peter?” It was Mom who asked. Though he wasn’t crying, Dad stood in stunned silence.

  “He’s fine,” I said. “I’ve got him here with me.” That was only technically true; since his parents’ death I’d had various members of the crew keep him occupied, though I made sure to see him for evening meals.

  “What happened?” Mom asked.

  “It was some kind of space parasite. It infected a lot of people on Deneva,” I said. “A lot of people died.”

  “But you stopped it,” Dad said, finally speaking.

  “I stopped it,” I said.

  “Was it … painful?” Mom said. I had watched Aurelan die in unimaginable pain, and Sam had to have gone in much the same way.

  “No,” I said, “it was quick.” The circumstances of what happened on Deneva would not become public, so I thought it was a useful lie. “How’re the twins?”

  “They keep us up a lot,” Dad said, “but they’re healthy.” Aurelan had given birth to twins two months before Sam was transferred to Deneva. The babies were deemed too young for space travel, so Mom and Dad offered to care for them until they’d reached six months, when it was safe for them to go. Now, though …

  “I’m going to take Peter to Starbase 10,” I said. “He’ll get quick passage back to Earth from there.”

  “You can’t …” Mom said, pausing. “Can’t you bring him—”

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” I said. I had known that the appropriate thing to do was to bring Peter home, but I just couldn’t. First Edith, and now Sam. It was all I could do not to crumble. If I went home, I felt like I might not ever leave. But I could see the hurt in Mom’s expression. She needed me.

  “It’ll be fine,” Dad said. “How is he?”

  “He’s a trooper,” I said. It was the truth. Peter, though sad, was holding up well. He seemed curious about the workings of a starship, and the crew had stepped in nicely as caregivers. While we talked, Sam’s two babies, Joshua and Steven, woke up and began crying.

  “You take care of yourself …” Dad said, his voice cracking. I could see he was about to cry. “We love you.”

  I smiled and
turned off the viewer.

  I felt guilty; I hadn’t seen Peter all day. I left my quarters and went to the rec room. Peter was there, playing three-dimensional chess with Spock. The ship’s quartermaster had fitted him into a gold command uniform. I went to the food dispenser, got a cup of coffee, and joined them. I asked how the game was going.

  “Mr. Kirk has your predilection for unpredictability,” Spock said.

  “My dad taught me to play,” Peter said.

  “Then you and I had the same chess teacher,” I said. “I hope he let you win every once in a while.”

  “Not really,” Peter said. “Dad said I would never learn anything that way. I did beat him once, though.” I watched them play for a little while. Spock eventually beat him, but it wasn’t easy. Then Spock excused himself. I really didn’t want him to leave; when I was alone with Peter, the pressure to connect with him was overwhelming.

  “Should I set up another game?” he asked. I said sure. I watched Peter as he put the pieces in place. He reminded me of Sam; same color hair and eyes, same intensity. He was focused on setting up the game, but I could see the sadness. I didn’t know what to do for him. And then I remembered when Mom had left, what Sam did for me.

  “Peter, do you miss them?” He stopped putting the pieces on the board. “It’s okay to miss them.”

  I hugged him for a while.

  “He’s kind, and he wants what’s best for us,” Carolyn Palamas said. “And he’s so lonely. What you ask would break his heart. Now how can I …”

  I was on Pollux IV, otherwise known as planet Mount Olympus, and I was the prisoner of a man calling himself Apollo. This was one of my most fantastic encounters; a being who claimed to actually be a Greek god. He was from an advanced race who had visited Earth in the distant past and had seemed like gods to the primitive humans of prehistory. It wasn’t hard to understand why, even to me: he controlled an incredible power source that he could channel through his body. When we first arrived, he had reached out with a force field like a giant hand that “grabbed” the Enterprise. Spock stayed on the bridge, while I took a landing party down to meet him. He stood in front of his temple, the source of his power, and told us he expected we’d become his worshippers again. And then, like any accomplished Greek god, he seduced a human woman, who happened to be one of my crewmen.